


The Greater Game

by thisissarcasm



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-09
Updated: 2012-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-29 06:23:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisissarcasm/pseuds/thisissarcasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an effort to alleviate one of John's bad habits, Sherlock starts a prank war. Wackiness ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greater Game

The course of human history, John Watson understood, was littered with conflicts. His own life had taught him that the world was built or destroyed based on war. And it was true. The once glorious British Empire now limped along with the rest of the Western world, rainy and chilly and just this side of depressing. The world was trapped somewhere between a war in the Middle East and a war on home turf.

Someone had once told him that when one experienced the world with Sherlock Holmes, one experienced the battlefield. John supposed that was true. But more than that, living with Sherlock Holmes was warzone in and of itself.

The details of the Great Baker Street Conflict would become decidedly fuzzier as history progressed. The details of who won would vary (John would, if you asked him, declare himself the victor; Sherlock would never admit to any such thing). The strategies employed would become more grandiose (especially if Sherlock was telling the story). The story of how it began would somehow become lost in translation and remembered only by the man who fired the first shot in a two-week conflict that resulted in much laughter on the part of everyone but the two parties involved.

It started, quite simply, with orange juice.

* * *

More the point, it started with an early morning alarm clock after about forty-five minutes of sleep, and with a grumble from an ex-Army doctor due for work within the hour. John staggered downstairs, still half-asleep, through the increasing maze of papers and books strewn about the flat.

Past the couch, where Sherlock was stretched out in his dressing gown, still decidedly against sleeping. He held his violin clutched against his chest, and he plucked absently at the strings. To the best of John’s knowledge, he had not slept in about five days.

No time to try to talk him into sleeping, John decided. It was only when he flicked the light switch in the kitchen did he realize that his jumper was on inside out.

He grabbed the orange juice from its spot on the top shelf – the “Do Not Tamper” shelf, he had named it after about two weeks of living there. It was the shelf where food items went. The shelf where non-food items were forbidden. It was the safe shelf. Thus far, Sherlock had been more or less accommodating on that front.

And so on this particular morning, John Watson raised the orange juice carton to his lips as he debated whether it was acceptable to change one’s jumper on the way to work, and took a large swig from the container.

Oh dear God. There was a taste in his mouth suddenly that wasn’t entirely unlike the smell of decomposing human bodies, and he barely made it to the sink before he spat the juice out. He grabbed onto the edge of counter and stifled the urge to gag.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. John spat several more times, and then gulped down handfuls of water. He read somewhere once that smiling suppressed the gag reflex, and he decided rather quickly that whatever moron came up with that should be shot.

As a cat might when hearing the jingling of a bag of treats, Sherlock poked his head into the kitchen only seconds later. “Problem?”

“I think the orange juice has gone bad.” John shut off the faucet and turned his attention back to the glass of juice now sitting on the counter. He considered for a moment, and opened the fridge again. The telltale carton sat as though waiting for him.

John realized rather quickly that Sherlock was watching him, but for the moment, he was resolute in his purpose. He opened the carton again and sniffed. His stomach churned again as he inhaled the odor.

“God. Definitely,” he said, moving to pour it out.

“I’ll take care of it,” Sherlock told him with an indifferent shrug.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! John froze, carton tilted but not tipped far enough to spill the putrid liquid over into the sink. He gave himself a moment for composure, and then turned back to Sherlock, who was watching him with what closely resembled interest.

“What did you do to it?” John asked, still holding the carton over the sink.

“Nothing.” Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“Then I’ll just pour it out now,” John said, giving him a smile that bordered on a sneer. “Five seconds won’t make me any later than I already am.” He tipped the carton further. Sherlock’s hyper-alert cat eyes went wider, and John saw it.

“One more time,” John said. “What. Did. You. Do.”

“Paranoia really doesn’t suit you, John,” Sherlock said. “Perhaps you should discuss this newly found mistrust of me with your therapist.”

John considered, and cleared his throat. “One. I haven’t been to therapy since I moved in. Two. In the year I’ve lived here, you’ve offered to get rid of something horrific out of the fridge exactly never. Whenever I say ‘bloody hell,’ you normally don’t move. And now here you are, offering to throw it out yourself.”

“Hm,” Sherlock said, making more of a noise than issuing an actual response. “Go on.”

“Go on? Sherlock, I don’t have time for…whatever this is,” John said, shaking his head.

“You look a little pale, John. Are you feeling alright?” A ghost of a smile on Sherlock’s lips, and John knew that particular expression well enough to know that Sherlock was in fact up to something. “Feeling a bit nauseous? Perhaps you’re suffering from a headache.”

“I’m getting one.” He glared at his flat mate, and waited.

“You’ll be fine,” Sherlock said. “It’s not poisoned or anything.”

“If it’s not poisoned, you wouldn’t be in the kitchen watching my every move to make sure I didn’t destroy this carton of juice,” John said. He tipped the carton a little further.

Sherlock considered, and then sighed. “Your theatrics, John. Honestly. I was merely conducting on experiment examining the effect of a certain mold on the human body.”

John stared at him for a long while. It could have been seconds, it could have been minutes. He wasn’t sure. He merely stood there dangling the juice carton over the sink with one hand, with his other hand hanging stupidly at his side. He opened his mouth to reply but halted, as though he was somehow unable to process this new information.

“You fed me mold.”

“I didn’t feed you anything. You left the juice out at room temperature for a twelve-hour period, and I took the liberty of putting it back for you,” Sherlock said, digging into the pocket of his dressing gown and producing his mobile.

“And it didn’t occur to you to…oh, I don’t know. Pour it out?” There was that very special headache forming after all. A headache not mold induced, but already environmental and already diagnosed. John called it Holmes Syndrome.

Genuine confusion in the eyes of the world’s only consulting detective. “Don’t be ridiculous. It was a perfectly reasonable and safe experiment, and you provided the means. It would have been a waste of perfectly good resources not to use it for something.”

“And that something was letting me drink moldy juice this morning,” John said, still partially dumbfounded and increasingly cranky about the whole ordeal.

“This morning,” Sherlock said with a nod as he began typing way on his phone. “And the two before it.”

“And the…I’ve been drinking moldy juice for three days?” Holmes Syndrome was now quickly taking effect. John ran a hand through his hair and massaged one of his newly aching temples.

“You hardly seemed to mind. And you might have noticed the mold if you would use a glass like a civilized person.”

“So that’s it, then? I’m your new guinea pig? What’s next, Sherlock, a bit of arsenic in some curry? Or is that taking things a bit too far?” God, grant me the serenity not to strangle my flat mate.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll be fine. Now…would you say that you’ve experienced any adverse reactions to mold exposure in the past seventy-two hours, Doctor Watson?”

John was angry and rather at a loss for the moment, and so he did the only thing he really could do. He poured out the orange juice and took a small measure of delight at the flash of agitation in Sherlock’s eyes, breezed past his flat mate, and was out the door for work without another word on the matter.

* * *

John Watson had grown up with an older sister with a nasty temper and a mean streak, and he had learned much from her over the years in his own way.

Once, Harry had fed him bits of dog food in his sleep and had kept careful tally of how many pieces he swallowed, and pinned it to the fridge for him to see the next morning. He remembered waking up and wondering why his mouth was so dry and why he tasted the faintest hints of bacon, only to be horrified by the revelation in the kitchen when he went to fetch water.

He had retaliated a few nights later when she assumed that he had forgotten by filling her hair dryer with flour, and he had seldom laughed harder than when he was awakened by her screaming at him while covered in flour the next morning.

And so it went, on and on until John left for university and Harry moved out, and over the years, John had kept all that useless information stored away somewhere in his brain. He wondered if Mycroft had done things like that to Sherlock when they were younger.

He supposed he was about to find out, because as he left work that very same day, he took as much prescription-grade lidocaine as he could fit into his pocket along with him as he left.

Now, he played the waiting game, and fortunately for the good doctor, he didn’t have to wait very long.

* * *

A day later, Sherlock was sulking about rather spectacularly, and as far as John could tell, he was finished being annoyed about the disposal of the tainted orange juice and had swayed back to being bored.

He was, at the moment, perched near one of the windows of the flat, shifting about in his seat as though he were an oversized child confined to a classroom when he would rather be out at play. For a single moment, John hesitated as he reconsidered the scheme. But when he came home to a mysterious orange biohazard bag sitting directly beneath the Do Not Tamper shelf, he swallowed whatever sympathy he might have had.

“Tea?” John called out from the kitchen.

“Black, two sugars, please,” Sherlock grumbled back at him, and John wondered momentarily how someone could make four seemingly innocuous words sound so damned put upon. With this in mind, he bit back a giggle and went to work brewing the tea.

Minutes ticked by and John poured up the tea, keeping a careful eye on Sherlock in the meantime. He was thankfully still grumping by the window, and John slipped the small plastic bottle from his pocket, squeezed a bit of the gel into the cup meant for Sherlock, and put it back into his pocket.

Sherlock’s phone rang in the living area, and John did his best not to get annoyed when he heard a relieved sigh from Sherlock, followed by a heartfelt “I refuse.” By the time he made it to the other room, teacups in hand, Sherlock was already up and knotting his scarf around his neck.

“That was Lestrade. Just dragged a body out of the Thames. You coming?” Sherlock asked. He had gone from immobile to fast-forward in a matter of seconds, and while he was somewhat relieved, he saw his opportunity for revenge slipping away.

“Yeah, just let me-…” Before he could finish his sentence, Sherlock took the cup of tea from him, downed it in a single gulp, and handed it back to him empty. “…put these away.”

For my blog: today, Sherlock murdered me. If you are unable to locate the remains, consider this my dying declaration.

John spent the first minute or two of the cab ride trying to figure out what to do next. He had already come down on the side of his revenge being a bad plan, and now, he had absolutely no idea how Sherlock was going to react to this. Harry was easy, and predictable; Sherlock, on the other hand, was anything but. Should he tell him? Should he let him figure it out for himself? Should he exit the cab before the above happened?

After two minutes in the cab, John pretended not to notice when Sherlock cleared his throat twice. Coughed a third time, and then licked his lips, and then froze. John could practically see the thoughts progressing in the mind of the world’s only consulting detective, and when Sherlock glanced sidelong at him, he knew that the other man had already deduced what was happening.

“How very childish, John,” Sherlock said, his voice still smooth and unwavering. “Lidocaine in my tea – very sophomoric, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry,” John said, as though it was some kind of knee-jerk reaction to apologize. And then, just as suddenly, he realized that the man to whom he was apologizing had knowingly fed him mold for three days just to see what happened, and so he added, “But you seem to have a bit of drool, just there.”

He gestured to the right corner of Sherlock’s mouth, and the other man began digging suddenly and silently in the pocket of his coat. John couldn’t decide which was better: the look on Sherlock’s face, or the fact that his observation was completely true.

Sherlock did not say another word for the entire length of the cab ride, and by the time they arrived at the crime scene, he was dabbing at his mouth repeatedly every minute or so, and John had given up all pretense of not grinning at his victory.

I can’t giggle. It’s a crime scene. I will not giggle at a crime scene.

John repeated it again and again to himself as he listened to Sherlock’s voice dissolve from that unusual preciseness he usually spoke with into what he imagined Sherlock would sound like after about half a bottle of Irish whiskey.

He busied himself by staring at the muddy pebbled at his feet, on the contorted look of horror on the dead man’s face, by staring at Sally Donovan’s confused expression. Anything but looking at Sherlock or, more importantly, anything but looking at Lestrade.

“Detective Inthspectah, are you lithening to me?” And then another dab of the handkerchief.

Lestrade cast a questioning glance in John’s direction, and all that John could think to do was given a shrug as though to say, I’m his flat mate, not his keeper.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lestrade said. “So tell me again about the blood.”

Yes, Sherlock. Talk about the bloodthstainth.

Sherlock wiped a bit of stray drool away again, and turned his attention back to the corpse on the ground. “Ath I wath thaying. You’re certain there are no wounds to the body, but he has bloodthtainth on hith shirt. Which meanth you should be out looking for another body.”

“Right. Yeah.” Lestrade was biting the inside of his cheek now and attempting not to smile, and Sherlock wiped a bit of drool away again. “We’ll get a team on it. Anything else?”

Sherlock stared accusingly at John when he said simply, “No.”

This was of course after he had deduced the man’s entire life story in a flurry of lisps, spittle, and annoyed huffs in front of half of Scotland Yard. Again, John pondered feeling guilty. And then he remembered that Sherlock had put spoiled juice back in the fridge and had used him as a lab rat, and it wasn’t so terribly pitiful anymore.

* * *

By midnight, the lidocaine had worn off and Sherlock had finally stopped drooling and scowling, and John was secretly relieved. Sherlock Holmes was easily the most brilliant man he had ever met, and it worried him to think how Sherlock might react to what was, he had to acknowledge, a rather childish prank.

Yet the detective had said nothing more of the matter as they whisked about the streets of London, following a trail of clues left by a sloppy killer with a stab wound to his side, until at last Lestrade had arrested him and hauled him off in a police car.

Sherlock seemed almost cheerful when they piled back into a taxi to head back toward Baker Street, and John busied himself by watching the city pass by in lieu of looking in his flat mate’s direction. Sherlock typed silently away at a text message on his phone, and did not speak either.

He did not speak until they were inside the flat, as he was hanging his coat.

“You have to sleep sometime, you know,” he said, his voice oh-so-casual and matter-of-fact. John, who had been preparing to flop down in a chair to watch a little telly before bed, froze on the spot.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me perfectly well the first time, John,” Sherlock said. He finished hanging his coat and his scarf, and he flopped down in the chair across from John and crossed his legs. He picked up his violin and then the bow, and waited.

“You let me drink mold as an experiment,” John offered, as though it would somehow justify his prank to Sherlock.

“Problem?” Sherlock asked.

“Why would that not be a problem?”

Sherlock fell silent for a moment, and then he did the absolute worst thing he could have done: he looked John dead in the eye, and smiled. “What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without so much as a nap?”

“I, um, I don’t really know,” John said, shrugging.

“Make an assessment,” Sherlock said, pointing the violin bow at him as though somehow willing him to think faster.

“Two days, maybe three,” John said.

“That’s adorable,” Sherlock said, hitting John on the knee with the violin bow. “I can stay awake for days. A week if I have to. My personal best is nine days – that’s triple your streak, if your estimate is correct. Imagine how many horrible things I can come up with in that time.”

John could no longer bite back a smile. “You’re not serious.”  
“As a heart attack,” Sherlock said, leaning back in his chair. “So. The question then becomes not if I retaliate, only when, my dear Watson.”

“We’re a bit old for this, don’t you think?” John asked. What fresh Hell is this?

“You seem frightened,” Sherlock said. “And the rules of cause and effect know no age limit. Remember that.”

“You started this,” John said. “I was just getting a little payback, that’s all.”

“And you did, and quite admirably. Now it would leave the universe very imbalanced if I were to accept defeat so easily,” Sherlock told him, raking the bow rather obnoxiously against the strings of the violin for punctuation. Sherlock rose and placed the violin on the chair, and glanced from it to John as though somehow daring him to touch it.

“How do I stop this from going further? I’m too old for this,” John said.

Sherlock grinned that damned grin again, and shook his head. “I’m not telling you this so that you’ll grovel. Groveling doesn’t suit you. No, this is just my open declaration of war. I acted out of intellectual curiosity. You acted out of a childish thirst for revenge. The game, John, is on.”

And seemingly satisfied with himself, Sherlock made to exit.

“And now where are you going?” John asked.

Sherlock looked at him as though the question was the dumbest he had ever heard, and his eyes went wide with the worst attempt at innocence John could recall. “I’m going to sleep. Honestly, John. This newly found paranoia of yours is not endearing.”

And thus, John Watson opened Pandora’s Box.

* * *

For five days after the initial strike in the Great Baker Street Conflict, a ceasefire seemed to occur between the two parties. John went to work, Sherlock spent two days on a murder case in Paris, and life resumed its usual blend of the mad and the mundane. Until, at last, Sherlock Holmes finally struck back.

The bathroom was, in its own way, similar to the Do Not Tamper shelf. It was, unlike the shelf, an unspoken rule in the house. When one flat mate is in the loo, the other was to leave him be. It had been that way for a year, and it had never been an issue.

On this particular afternoon, John had come home from work feeling particularly irked by the notion of sick children sneezing on him all day. Sherlock was nowhere to be found in the flat, which meant, he realized, he could let that little voice of paranoia rest for just a little while.

He was increasingly under the impression that Sherlock had forgotten all about the incident with the lidocaine, and that was fine, too.

And so, John Watson was in the shower. Since Sherlock wasn’t around to scowl about his “mindless noise” being too loud, he was more than happy to shower to the tune of the Rolling Stones.

He was halfway through the chorus of “Honky Tonk Woman” when he heard a noise, and he froze mid-verse and waited. The small bathroom was filled with entirely too much sound for him to pick one from the next, between the sound of the music and the sound of the shower, and so John quickly but silently turned the shower off.

“Hello?” he called out. He wouldn’t dare.

The only sound left in the room was that of the Rolling Stones, but now, John was certain that he could hear noise somewhere in the flat, and instant alarm bells began going off in his mind saying, He’s up to something.

John poked his head hesitantly out from behind the shower curtain, and breathed a sigh of relief when he found the washroom completely empty. Satisfied, at least for the time being, he shook his head at what he thought very well might have been his own paranoia, and turned the shower back on.

Thirty more minutes under scalding water, and John felt clean. He wrapped a towel around himself and turned the radio off, and listened again, just to be sure he wasn’t caught off guard. It was only when he went to retrieve his clothes did he realize that something was very amiss.

The spot where he had left clean clothes was empty. John stood there stupidly for a moment, trying to figure out how it was humanly possible that Sherlock had picked the lock on the door, stolen his clothes, and slinked out again without him hearing much of anything.

And yet he was staring that very evidence in the face, and he was quickly reaching only one possible conclusion.

John swallowed a bit of pride and cracked the bathroom door.

“Sherlock, are you here?” he called out.

“Busy, John,” was the answer that came after a moment’s hesitation.

“Busy doing what, exactly?”

“I’m trying to have my lunch. Is that perfectly all right with you?”

“Sherlock, I need my clothes.” Harry, I miss you so very much right now.

“Really? I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that,” Sherlock called back to him.

“Just…give them back.” The Holmes Syndrome was emerging again. Right in John’s temporal lobe, in fact. Soon it would spread, and quickly, given the circumstances.

“I don’t have them, John. Really.”

“For God sakes, Sherlock, just…I’m going to go upstairs and get clothes from there. I’m not in the mood for this,” John said, shaking his head. I am not going to beg you for my clothes back. And if this is the best prank you could think of, then I feel sorry for you.

“Do whatever you like,” Sherlock replied. “This is your flat too, remember?”

John didn’t even glance in Sherlock’s direction when he scurried, out and up the stairs clad in a towel, but he was fairly certain he heard Sherlock sigh as though somehow disappointed by his prank’s results.

When John slammed the bedroom door behind him for punctuation (and perhaps to signal his triumph), he was able to breathe a sigh of relief. He went quickly to the nearby chest of drawers, and couldn’t help but smile as he opened it. It was a smile that faded almost as soon as it emerged.

The drawer, once containing his clothes, was empty, save for a pair of socks. A single, solitary pair, one of which had a hole in it. John felt his heart leap up into his throat in sudden panic, and he opened a second drawer.

Empty.

A third, and then a fourth, and then the small walk-in closet near the bed. The hangers remained, but his jumpers were gone. As was every single piece of clothing in his bedroom – every single piece of his clothing in the flat – except for a single pair of white cotton socks.

Oh God, no.

John considered his options. He could kill Sherlock with a gun, of course, but that would be rather noisy and most certainly bloody. He could attempt to strangle him, but it was likely that Sherlock would put up a bit of a fight. But then, John realized, he would never have any idea where all of his clothes had gone if Sherlock was too dead to talk.

And so, what was left of his pride now as riddled with holes as the remaining socks, John made sure that his towel was more safely secured, took a deep breath, and went back downstairs.

Sherlock was sitting on the sofa, laptop in his lap, typing absently away at something. He did not look up when John re-entered the room. If John hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that Sherlock didn’t know he was there.

“Alright, you win,” John said. He was without clothes and thoroughly flabbergasted, and more than willing to grovel and admit defeat.

Sherlock looked up from the laptop, and furrowed his brow, and closed the laptop, sitting it aside. He considered for a moment, and took a deep breath. “John, we’ve never had to talk about this before, but…I think a certain degree of boundaries is in order among flat mates, and while I appreciate your confidence and your interest, I would ask that you put some clothes on.”

John stared at him, dumbfounded. “Where are they.”

“Hm?” Sherlock picked up the eggroll he had been eating, and stared at John in confusion. But there was, John realized, amusement hidden just behind that expression of incredulity. A glimmer in his eye that said, Why yes, I am the Devil. How may I help you?

“I said ‘you win,’” John repeated.

“You did say that,” Sherlock said. “And that’s very big of you to admit, John. It’s the mark of a true man to admit his defeat. So…on the matter of your clothes.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll find that your wardrobe is packed safely away into three suitcases – my suitcases, by the way, for which you are very welcome. They are safe, I assure you,” Sherlock said.

A sigh of relief. “Great. Where are they?”

Sherlock glanced at his watch, rolled his eyes upward as though silently doing some sort of calculation in his head, and then glanced back at John. “I would estimate that in about twenty-five seconds, they’ll be on their way to wherever the cabbie ends up once he’s driven the length of whatever fare I paid him.”

“No.” It was the only coherent thought he could form.

“Fifteen seconds, John. I’d suggest you make a decision.” Sherlock tapped his watch for emphasis.

John stared at him. “You could at least let me borrow your coat.”

Sherlock lifted up a receipt from the coffee table, and That Damned Smile returned. “I just dropped it at the cleaners.”

“You think I won’t do it?” John asked.

“That’s really not for me to guess,” Sherlock said. “Although you’re still standing here when you should be stopping that cabbie outside. Unless of course you feel that adamantly about this newly found liberation of yours, in which case we’ll have to revisit our living arrangement and quite frankly-…”

John was running down the steps in his towel and he could still hear Sherlock talking as he ran, but he couldn’t make out the words. He made it to the front door of 221B and stopped when his hand touched the knob of the door. It was late afternoon. Baker Street was very busy.

But he reasoned that it was easier to stop a cab at the curb than it was to hail one wearing nothing but a towel, and so, he opened the door, and scurried to the taxi still waiting at the curb. He flung open the back door and was relieved at least to find the three suitcases, as promised. The cabbie simply sat there staring at him, grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, piss off,” John snapped, snatching up the luggage. He was fairly certain that the entire street was watching by now. He was even more certain that someone was already updating their Twitter accordingly.

He slammed the front door behind him in time to find Mrs. Hudson standing at the base of the stairs, and her eyes went wide when she saw him. He held a suitcase in each hand, and had the third tucked under his arm. Mrs. Hudson stood there for a moment longer, as though trying to decide whether to laugh or panic.

“You two having a little domestic?” she asked finally.

* * *

Newly dressed, John considered his next move. He was still leaning partially toward the whole murder idea, and yet…Harriet Watson had taught him better than to cave so easily. He had spent eighteen years with her, and he would be damned, he decided, if some Cambridge prat who didn’t know the solar system was going to beat him at the game he and his sister had perfected so many years ago.

He took a moment to compose himself, and he ventured back downstairs to find Sherlock right where he had left him before. There was an undeniable gleam of amusement in Sherlock’s eyes.

“That was well done,” John admitted. “Very well done indeed.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Was it?”

“Yeah. Brilliant, in fact,” John said, and he meant it. “But you know what? It’s not over. I’ll not have you sitting around gloating about this. Not gonna happen. So you enjoy this victory. Because it’s my turn again.”

“I thought you were ‘too old’ for this,” Sherlock said, and John swore that he was biting back a smile.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been recently informed that the rules of cause and effect don’t have an age limit,” John told him. “And believe me when I say that I grew up finding new ways to give people Hell. I learned from the best. What’s the worst you could’ve possibly learned from Mycroft?”

“Try me.”

“It may not be in public, Sherlock, but I’m going to win this battle. You’re going to be the one to crack. I promise you that,” John told him.

“You don’t expect me to live in fear, do you? Because I just watched you run naked out into the street in front of the landlady.” Sherlock had given up on not smiling, and he seemed more amused by this turn of events than John would ever have expected.

“No, of course not,” John said. “But that’s what’s so funny about you. You don’t live in fear and you don’t dwell on things. But you do have your weaknesses. This ‘smarter than thou’ persona, for example. Pride cometh before the fall, Sherlock. Remember that.”

“I look forward to it.”

* * *

And so, John waited. It was essentially a requirement of being Sherlock’s flat mate that one have nearly infinite patience to begin with, and so it took John another five days to finally decide how he would win the conflict against Sherlock. In those five days, life again resumed its own warped sense of normalcy. Cases, running, and the occasional dead body later, John had been lucky enough on the sixth day to swipe Sherlock’s phone while he was busy arguing Anderson down at a crime scene.

Four hours later, he had deposited the phone back in Sherlock’s pocket, and for an hour now, he had been waiting.

They had just wrapped another case, and Sherlock had retreated to his room surprisingly early, looking genuinely sleepy and satisfied with the result of the case. And so, John sat waiting, updating his blog on the latest case (but of course neglecting to mention the prank war), and it took perhaps forty-five minutes before Sherlock emerged again.

“Really? This is the best you could do, John?” Sherlock asked. “I’m sorely disappointed.”

“No idea what you’re talking about, Sherlock,” John said with a shrug. “Now pipe down. I’m trying to watch Doctor Who.”

“I’ve received three texts from one ‘Ronald Weasley,’ whoever that is,” Sherlock said, holding up his phone. “And another from someone called ‘Lady Gaga.’ You honestly took the time to go through my phone and change every single one of my contacts’ names.”

“I thought it would be a nice exercise for you,” John told him, glancing up at him. “You know, deduce who is actually texting you and all that. You’re getting a bit rusty, I think.”

“Oh, how dull of you,” Sherlock said. “Just when I thought the game was getting exciting.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, then,” John told him.

Sherlock considered for a moment, and shrugged. “Better luck on the next one, then. Cup of tea?”

It caught John off guard, and he wondered if this was Sherlock’s way of trying to slip something into his drink. If John was willing to dose his flat mate with lidocaine, what was Sherlock willing to serve him up in a soothing beverage?

He’s too clever for that.

“Would I really be so repetitive, John?” Sherlock asked, holding up his hands as if to say, I’m really just offering you tea.

“No, I guess not,” John said. “Yeah, with milk.”

Sherlock considered for a moment longer, stuffed his phone back into his pocket, and made his way toward the kitchen, moving quickly as though somehow determined. John leaned back on the sofa just as the satisfying sound of shoes squeaking and sliding came from the kitchen, and there was at once the sound of six feet of consulting detective hitting the floor. John waited a moment, grabbed his phone, and went to the doorway of the kitchen.

Sherlock was lying flat on his back near the kitchen table. A chair had been knocked over and the table had shifted several feet. John flipped on the light, and waited, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed.

“John, what the hell…” Sherlock sat up, and reached for the counter, trying to pull himself up from what looked like a rather spectacular fall. John almost choked on laughter when he saw the thin coating of butter that ran up Sherlock’s back and into his hair.

Sherlock slid again when he tried to pull himself up, going down sideways this time against the very booby-trapped kitchen floor.

John snapped a picture with his phone, and saved it: a single snapshot of Sherlock Holmes lying in the kitchen floor of the flat, covered in butter and rendered absolutely useless.

“Is this…butter?” Sherlock asked after a moment.

“Mmhm,” John said absently as he entered Mycroft’s number to send a picture message.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock said suddenly, sharply.  
Oh, wait a minute now. Could it be?

“Just…texting a friend,” John told him with a shrug. “I’ll help you up in just a minute. But I do believe that Mycroft and I have really lost touch recently, and I think he needs to know exactly what this living arrangement has come to.”

“Don’t you dare.” Desperation creeping into that usually steady voice, and John paused. “You win. I quit. I am defeated. I can cope with being covered in cooking ingredients on my own kitchen floor. Just…please. Not Mycroft. Anything but that.”

“Sounds almost like you’re begging, Sherlock. What’s that world you used? Groveling, I believe.” John tapped his phone against his lips as though considering.

“Piss off,” Sherlock shot back.

“We’ll just see how Mycroft feels about all of this,” John said. “I’m sure he’ll be interested.”

“Please, John,” Sherlock said, and for a single insane moment, John swore that the other man was crying. Yet upon closer inspection, he realized that Sherlock was instead laughing. No, giggling, in fact, in the most delighted of ways. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and leaned against the cabinet, and tossed his head back and laughed.

John couldn’t take the straight-faced approach anymore, and he laughed, too. He laughed until he couldn’t breathe at the sight of Sherlock, seemingly so invincible most of the time, sitting in the kitchen floor and covered in butter and laughing until his cheeks were pink, and by the time he was able to force his laughter to subside, there were tears in his eyes.

“How am I supposed to get up?” Sherlock asked him when at last he had regained his ability to speak.

“Here, just…” John reached out a hand. “If you pull me down, I will just haul off and kill you. Just so we’re clear.”

“Understood,” Sherlock told him. A few slips but not quite falls later, Sherlock was back on solid and not buttered ground. He was now surveying the spatter pattern of butter about the kitchen.

“So I win,” John said, enjoying both the idea and the actual uttering of the words.

“Undoubtedly,” Sherlock said.

“And you have no idea how, do you,” John said, studying Sherlock closely.

“Not especially, no,” Sherlock said. It was rare for Sherlock to admit a lack of knowledge about things in that way, and John took momentary pride in his scheme.

“Well, you may be the brains behind this operation, but I know you, Sherlock,” John said. “The clothes thing, it was great. But you have to ask yourself at the end of the day – is that really the worst thing I can imagine? Not really. I knew that you would absolutely admit defeat if I both humiliated you – in private – and then let your brother in on the joke. Which I had no intention of actually doing, by the way.”

Sherlock considered the new information, and nodded. “Sound reasoning so far. Go on.”

Jim smiled. “I also knew that while it started by complete accident, you were having fun with this, and that something so silly as changing the contacts in your phone would disappoint you. And then I knew that you’d not only want me to try again, but that you would more than likely make some sort of gesture in consolation to encourage me to keep the game going. And I knew that the last thing that you would ever think for me to do would be to take the time to smear butter all over the kitchen floor, knowing full well that I would have to be the one to clean it.”

Sherlock shook his head, and grimaced as he realized that the left side of his head was caked in butter. “Why John, it’s almost as if you know me.”

“Like I said.”

It was at that moment that the door to the flat swung open to reveal Mrs. Hudson, looking spooked and wholly unprepared for whatever she might find on the other side of the door. John and Sherlock stood there together in the living area of the flat, one of them still red in the face from laughter, the other partially covered in butter, and stared back at the landlady.

“Oh,” Mrs. Hudson said, and John saw her cheeks grow a bit pinker. “I thought I heard a crash, but I can tell this is absolutely none of my business. Sorry, boys.”

* * *

And so, the Great Baker Street Conflict ended with a flurry of laughter and butter. After that day, Mrs. Hudson never looked at either of them quite the same way and sometimes, when Sherlock got just a little too snippy, John would raise an eyebrow and hold up his phone as though to say, I still have that picture, you know. John wasn’t in fact lying when he said he wouldn’t send the picture to Mycroft.

That is not, however, to say that Harry Watson didn’t receive a picture message that very same night with a text attached that said simply, “I won. – John”


End file.
